Richard started his professional career as a primary school teacher: he taught all age groups from 4 to 12 years in a bilingual public primary school in Ireland.
After a number of years, Richard retrained as an educational psychologist and was employed for nearly 2 decades with the Irish Ministry of Education, working with students from 3 to 19 years. He assessed and supported children and young people with, inter alia, autism spectrum disorder, developmental coordination disorder, dyslexia, ADHD, and language disorder. In addition to supporting parents and schools in meeting the needs of children with special educational needs and social, emotional, behavioural difficulties, he also worked directly with students providing short-term, solution focused therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
Richard was a senior, team-leading psychologist in Ireland and provided professional supervision to colleagues. He also supervised educational psychologists in training from University College Dublin, the Queen’s University Belfast, University College London and the University of Rennes (France).
Richard is committed to collaborative problem solving with clients, parents and teachers as his main approach to practice. His assessments are designed to inform intervention planning.
Richard trained at University College Dublin where he obtained his Masters in Educational Psychology. He is a Chartered Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland and a Registered Psychologist with the Singapore Psychological Society. Since qualifying, he conducted doctoral research on psychologists’ responses to traumatic events in schools at the University of Exeter (UK).